NEW DELHI: India's merchandise exports last fiscal beat the government's target, but a steeper rise in imports widened the trade deficit and piled pressure on the country's balance of payments.

Announcing the provisional trade figures on Friday, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma said exports shot up 20% over the previous year topping $300 billion, while imports surged 31% to $485 billion.

Sharma said the inflated import bill was largely on account of a rise in crude prices. With imports far outstripping exports, the country's trade deficit for the fiscal widened to $185 billion, prompting Sharma to term it "an area of concern and a big challenge for the current year".

"It is beyond us to control or regulate crude prices in the world market," the minister told a news conference in Delhi. "But we have a strategy to increase exports. The trade policy guides us and the strategy is constantly reconstructed to respond to changes in the scenario."

The minister said India spent $150 billion on crude oil imports last fiscal and another $60 billion on the import of gold and silver. India imports nearly 80% of its crude requirement.

Sharma said for now he was happy that India's exports crossed the $300-billion mark "despite the challenging global scenario". He said the government would try to push export growth through the foreign trade policy to be announced next month.

Admitting that the current account balance needed careful handling, commerce secretary Rahul Khullar said the foreign trade policy would address the situation to a large extent.

"Expectations are that it will be a difficult year, but there is a way of dealing with every difficulty," Khullar said.

Experts, however, said continued volatility and uncertainty in Europe and other Western markets is likely to have an impact on India's export growth in 2012-13.

"Export growth would tend to be weak because of the Euro recession even with a recovery in the US economy," said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist with rating agency CARE.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee did not announce any sop for exporters in his budget for 2012-13, while incentives worth Rs 1,700 crore announced in October last year were allowed to lapse in April. Sharma is likely to meet Mukherjee soon with a request for more funds to boost exports.

Giving a break-up of the trade data on Friday, Sharma said sectors which saw a growth in exports last fiscal included engineering, petroleum products, gems and jewellery, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and textiles.

He said exports in March 2012 rose 10% over the previous year to $32.6 b. Imports in the month grew 46% to $50.8 billion. The government is expected announce revised trade figures for the year later this month.